The University of Louisville Athletic Association Board of Directors approved new contract terms for head swimming coach Arthur Albiero last week. The new contract, which takes effect July 1, 2019, is a 7-year rolling deal that includes a $50,000 raise for Albiero on his base salary. According to public records, his prior base salary was $200,000 per year, which lifts his new annual salary to $250,000.
This is in addition to bonus tied to top 5/10/25 finishes at the NCAA Championships, ACC Championships and Coach of the Year honors, APR excellence among other possible accomplishments.
“Arthur has built an incredible program, taking the program from not-so-great to having consistent success, including coaching the women to a fourth place finish in the NCAA and the men to a fifth place for another great team finish last year. It was another way to look at his contract so that he hopefully will end his career here at Louisville. We extended it and time-framed it. He and I talked about if a year ago, about how to get it done. This contract lets him know we want for him for the rest of his career.”
Albiero has been the program’s head coach for 17 years and has built Louisville into a national powerhouse. In 2019, they became the first ACC program in history to have both its men’s and women’s teams finish among the top 5 in the team standings. That included a program-best 4th-place finish by the women including 2 NCAA event titles for then-senior Mallory Comerford. For the Louisville women, their 4th-place finish was a 5th-straight top 10 finish at the NCAA Championships, while the Louisville men have been in the top 15 at NCAAs for each of the last 8 seasons.
In his time, the team has won 4 men’s and 8 women’s NCAA event championships. Comerford won 4, Kelsi Worrell won 4 (including NCAA Record-setting swims in the 100 and 200 yard fly), Joao de Lucca won the 200 free in 2013 and the 100 and 200 free in 2014, and Carlos Almeida won the 200 breast in 2013.
Albiero’s son Nicolas is a junior on the Louisville team, while his daughter Gabi will be a freshman in the fall of 2020.
$250K for coaching a non-revenue sport! Sorry to be the naysayer, but this is just going to continue the death spiral of college swimming. Good for the coach, but how long until Louisville cuts the program? No way any AD could justify that salary over the long term, especially a publicly funded university in a state where the median household income is $48K per year.
You can research that the athletics program at Louisville generates around $120 mm in revenue before taking account the upside from the newly launched ACC network so the median income in the Commonwealth of Kentucky has no relevance to paying a coach competitive to his peers to run an elite program
I don’t believe any taxpayer dollars compensate Coach Albiero. I do believe a modest portion of revenue is student fees but that also helps pay for facilities open to the students
In 2018 Louisville took more than $7M from Student Fees and the general fund (includes taxpayers) to support the Athletic Department. Compare that to many other schools on the top revenue list who returned millions of dollars to their school”s general fund. Athletics are a net drain on the financials of U of L. Taxpayers making an average of $48K per year, most of whole don’t care about swimming, do not need to be paying a swim coach $250K. This is exactly why programs get cut and why college swimming is slowly disappearing… All the data is easily available and published by each university. A summary can be found here: https://sports.usatoday.com/ncaa/finances/
Like I said only a modest amount of revenues from student fees. There are no state funds from Frankfort. Whether the allocated includes indirect support from the University paying facilities operating costs like the Natatorium used by the general student body is also possibly included in the modest 5% of allocated revenues. I think with $134 mm in revenue and only $132 mm in expense Louisville’s AD appreciates he can pay competitively to keep a top five coach of a very important women’s program (success of women’s athletics is a commitment at Louisville) as well as the men’s program.
I say he is getting shafted! He should be earning $400K a year. Fire some of the BIG10 or SEC lazy fat cats, hire this man and watch BOTH programs become dynasty!
Arthur Albiero should take that extra $50,000 raise and put it back into the Louisville swimming program. He has a chance to lighten his workload by hiring another assistant, get another scholarship, and less taxes to pay. He should have plenty of money and a nice state of Kentucky pension coming his way.
I’m pretty sure that Louisville is fully funded in terms of coaches and scholarships…
Get another scholarship? Do you even know how college athletics works?
Congrats !!!
Still sucks when small DI and then DII and DIII coaches can’t even make a living off of their salary.
Great coach and true gentleman. Well deserved.
I understand Swimming is a non revenue sport but these top performing coaches covering combined programs deserve 500k and up a year. They lead double the swimmers and staff and are over worked. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe I read Carol Capitani at Texas, coaching a single program makes, a base of 264k. Compared to what basketball and football (even assistants) make 250k is a too little. Glad Authur got a raise, he’s a great coach and an even better person. How about a more flattering picture of him Braden? 😉
Unfortunately that’s about as flattering of a photo as you can find
Best coach and coaching staff in the country
one of the best programs ….
other teams would strongly disagree!
I like to see a swim coach make decent money. Depressing when a college coach makes 36k a year! Arthur deserves this too. He has had a lot of success building that program and making good swimmers great.